The Ninth Day Read online

  “I’ll take the BMW. Follow me,” Raoul said. He yanked the driver’s-side door open.

  “Do you have a gun?” Emma yelled to Raoul over the noise of gunfire and crackling flames.

  “You don’t get a gun,” Raoul said. “Headlights off. Drive slow.” He paused for a moment and stared in the direction of the hacienda, watching the compound burn. Emma looked, too.

  The night sky glowed orange, and the rapid, staccato sound of assault weapons filled the air. From out of the bushes came La Valle, Chando, Serena, and another man. The last was ringed by several guards, who swung their heads from side to side, scanning for danger.

  Ginoa, Emma thought. The man carried himself with an air of power. This last group piled into the limousine, with the two guards jumping in the front. The rest of the guards climbed into the ambulance, and two hopped into the Mercedes.

  Emma crawled into the driver’s seat of the Escalade, and Oz climbed into the passenger side. “They made us drive the biggest damn target there is,” she said to Oz. “With the possible exception of the ambulance.” She turned the car on and it responded immediately. “At least it runs. Remind me where the leaves are.”

  “In the glove compartment, behind the fake radio, in a dummy panel between the sides of the car and the footwell . . .” Emma pulled her leg away from the side panel. “. . . and under the bench cushions in the backseat.” Oz ended his speech in a coughing fit.

  The BMW moved out, and Emma followed. They wound their way down the frontage road. The darkness made it difficult to stay on the path, but Emma breathed a sigh of relief when they entered a short stand of trees. It lent a feeling of security. A false one, Emma knew, but it still felt better than being out in the open. After a couple of minutes of driving, during which Oz said nothing and the reports of gunfire faded, they reached the beginning of the fields.

  Raoul slowed, and then stopped. Emma braked as well. Behind her the limousine idled, with the ambulance next and the Mercedes last. The lights on the BMW switched on without warning, and Emma heard the wheels squeal as Raoul must have pushed the gas pedal all the way down. The BMW shot off in a fog of smoke and flying dirt.

  Emma flicked her own lights on and the Escalade responded, albeit somewhat slower than the BMW, but it still managed to reach a decent speed quickly. Emma glanced in the rearview mirror and she watched the sky glow red with fire and flashes. She turned her eyes away and drove into the night.

  Chapter 17

  “Emma Caldridge is missing.” Edward Banner held the phone to his ear and tried to process what Carol Stromeyer, the vice president of his company, Darkview, was saying. “I’m sorry to bother you on vacation, but I thought you’d want to know,” she said.

  Banner sat up on the edge of the bed, doing his best not to disturb the sleeping woman beside him. Her long brown hair flowed over the pillow. A quick glance at the bedside clock told him it was four in the morning. He got up and left the room, closing the door behind him and stepping into the living area of the suite. He flicked on the light by a desk and settled into the chair.

  “No, you’re right to call. What can you tell me?”

  “Not much, unfortunately. She failed to appear for work in the morning. The lab didn’t think much of it. She was on an excursion to find some plants in the desert, and they assumed that she had camped out overnight.”

  Banner yawned. “Sounds reasonable. So why the worry now?”

  “They’re not worried, I am. She sent a text that she’d seen a group of people being smuggled over the border and gave the coordinates. But the coordinates were located in Arizona.” I just got back in town and checked the status on that GPS locator watch you gave her. Its last transmission came from Ciudad Juarez.”

  Now she had Banner’s full attention.

  “Kidnapped?”

  “I think we have to assume so, yes.

  “Who would she tell them to call for ransom?”

  “My bet is on you. Or Cameron Sumner.”

  Banner ran a hand through his hair. He was due to fly home later that day, connecting through Miami.

  “Is Sumner back in Key West?”

  “Yes. He’s conducting a training session there. I thought I’d arrange a quick charter to the Keys for you instead of to Miami. This way, whichever one of you they call, you’ll be together and can coordinate something.” She rattled off the flight information. “How’s the vacation? Did you get some rest?”

  “I did. I want to thank you for insisting on it. I’m going to insist on the same for you when I get back.”

  Banner and Stromeyer had been working eighteen-hour days repairing the damage done to Darkview by a congressional probe into an earlier matter undertaken in conjunction with the Department of Defense. While Darkview’s actions were ultimately determined to be appropriate, it had taken months to acquire additional DOD assignments. They’d been unable to pin down the source of the lies that started the probe, but put that goal aside while they rebuilt the company’s balance sheet. As a result, Banner was exhausted, and once the company regained its footing, Stromeyer had insisted that he take a break. For a brief moment he’d almost forgotten himself and asked her to join him, but pulled back in time. She was his colleague, the request would have been inappropriate, and he didn’t know if she had any thoughts about him that went beyond friendship. Not to mention that he needed her at the helm in his absence.

  Now Banner hung up and pondered the situation for a moment. He sighed, switched off the light, and walked back into the bedroom, navigating his way to the bed. He carefully lowered himself down onto it again.

  “Let me guess, that was the wife calling.” Her voice came out of the gloom. Banner smiled in the dark at the idea of Stromeyer being his wife. Once again, he pushed the thoughts aside.

  “I’m not married,” he said. “And you should have asked me that long before this.”

  He heard her give a small laugh. “I was busy.”

  “The whole week?”

  “You were there,” she said. “Besides, you never asked me, either.”

  Now it was his turn to laugh. She was famous the world over. With paparazzi following her slightest move. He knew everything about her, not because he read the tabloids, but because information about her was so ubiquitous that even he couldn’t escape it. He knew she wasn’t married. Had never been.

  He’d met her the first day of the vacation, when he’d gone to the resort bar to relax after the long flight. She’d been surrounded by people; the curious stared at her, the bodyguards kept close. Through it all she’d sat, gazing into her drink, looking pensive. He knew from the tabloids that she’d just ended a relationship, so he wasn’t surprised that she was alone, but what did surprise him was that she’d managed to use a trip to the ladies’ room to slip away from the bodyguards. He’d thrown his money down on the bar and followed her into the dark, keeping his distance as she walked the exclusive and empty beach alone. His position as CEO of Darkview made security second nature to him, and he didn’t like to see her taking such a risk. He assumed she’d hired the guards for a reason, and shaking them to be alone wasn’t a wise move.

  He’d tailed her easily, enjoying the soft night breeze and listening to the waves lap against the shore; giving her plenty of space, but watching for any signs of threat. At the turnaround they’d met, and he’d simply nodded and turned with her, saying nothing and strolling along. She’d spoken first, commenting on the beach’s beauty, and they’d walked and talked the length of the return and then two more laps. By the end of the evening he’d asked her to have lunch with him the next day.

  “That was work calling. Something’s happened that requires me to divert from Miami. We won’t be able to fly back together. I’m sorry.” He heard her sigh.

  “Actually, that’s better. Your face would be plastered all over the tabloids if you did, and I know enough about you already to know that you’d hate that.”

  Banner thought her turning the situation to one that bene
fitted him was a bit of deft handling on her part. He knew that she had no intention of making their liaison public. She guarded her privacy even more than he did, and, as the president of a contract security company that routinely dealt with classified missions the world over, he kept his private life buried very deep. That she was as fanatical about hers said something.

  She was right, of course. He would hate to have the press focus on him. He had dealt with the media often enough to realize that there was no way to appease their insatiable appetite for news. While he found her funny, charming, beautiful, and endowed with a personality that filled a room and a movie screen, he didn’t wish to be sucked into the vortex surrounding her, even had she allowed it. At least not on this short of an acquaintance. If he saw her again, he wanted it to be in private. He knew that she would, as well. He reached for her in the dark.

  “Let’s make these last hours count.”

  Banner stepped onto the tarmac in Key West and squinted in the bright sunlight and the heat. He spotted Cameron Sumner leaning against a Jeep, with his sunglasses on and his arms folded across his chest. Sumner stood a little over six feet and was lean, with brown hair and a face that was handsome in a masculine, slightly rugged manner. He dressed conservatively in khaki pants that looked well worn and a polo shirt that may once have been navy in color, but was now faded to a softer blue. He looked cool, collected, and calm. In all the time Banner had known Sumner, he had never seen the man react with fear, nervousness, or even extreme anger. Sumner never lost his temper. As Banner walked toward the Jeep, he did notice that Sumner’s mouth was set, and his jaw seemed clenched. Banner had an idea what Emma Caldridge meant to this man, and he admired his composure in the face of this latest bad news. He reached the Jeep and held out his hand.

  “Any news?” he said.

  Sumner shook his hand. “Nothing. No call, no text, e-mail, nothing.”

  Banner thought about that a moment. “Isn’t that a bit unusual?”

  “Highly. On average they make contact within twenty-four hours of the event. Assuming the victim is alive, of course.”

  Banner frowned. “Any Jane Does been found in the Ciudad Juarez area?”

  “You mean other than the four hundred already murdered women?”

  Banner grimaced. Sumner was right, of course. Over the last twenty years, hundreds of women had disappeared from Ciudad Juarez. Some believed a serial killer worked the town with impunity. Others thought human trafficking was the cause, but all believed that the perpetrators were known to the police, who turned a blind eye. Sumner pushed off the Jeep.

  “No recent bodies. Of course, if she fell afoul of whoever is killing the women of Ciudad, then there is a good chance we’ll never hear from her.” Sumner’s voice sounded harsh as he made this last observation. He waved Banner into the Jeep. “Come on. I’ll take you to the radar center and we can talk there.” Banner threw his bag into the back of the car and slid into the passenger seat. Sumner circled the tarmac and left off a frontage road.

  “How’s the drug busting going?”

  Sumner worked for a branch of the Southern Hemisphere Defense organization responsible for detecting cartel drug planes that attempted to enter U.S. airspace from the south. His main responsibilities involved the “Air Tunnel Denial” program, a group charged with identifying these low-flying aircraft and intercepting them. Once they pinpointed a target, Sumner’s group had the authority to demand that the intruder identify themselves, scramble their own planes to intercept the suspicious flight in cases where the response is inadequate, and, if required, shoot the foreign aircraft down.

  “We’ve intercepted two hundred flights in the last three months. Now the cartels are moving underwater. The Coast Guard is reporting a rash of homemade submarines.”

  Banner snorted. “Homemade submarines?” He shook his head. “Never ceases to amaze me how ingenious the cartels can get. Do the subs work?”

  Sumner cleared the airport runway and shifted into third. “Pretty well, considering how crude they are. They have fiberglass bodies and use PVC plumbing tubes that they jam into the top. The pipes pierce the surface, providing air. Of course, we have no idea how many sink en route.”

  “And the poor mules driving them sink right along with them,” Banner said.

  Sumner nodded. “The cartel doesn’t worry too much about losing them. As long as there are broke people desperate to make some cash, the cartel is insured a steady supply.”

  Sumner drove along the frontage road to the far tip of the tarmac and slowed in front of a heavy metal gate bearing a sign with PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT and the usual picture of a stick figure getting caught in the gate as it closed. Sumner reached up and pressed a door opener, and the gates swung wide.

  The Air Tunnel Denial offices were located in a second control tower at the end of the existing airport. The hexagonal building held six employees on an eight-hour shift. Enough people to monitor suspicious flights around the clock. Sumner parked the Jeep in a reserved spot at the base of the tower and waved Banner into it.

  “I’ll show you the control center first. That building”—he indicated a low, ranch style structure thirty feet from the tower—“is the main office.”

  They took a flight of stairs and entered the control tower, and Banner was struck by the quiet in the room. Three men sat in front of radar screens populated with various dots moving across in formation. None spoke, though all cast a quick glance at Sumner and nodded a greeting before returning their attention to the screens. The third man indicated to Sumner that he should come closer.

  “Got something?” Sumner said.

  The man pointed at a dot on his screen. “Been watching this one since Colombia. Guys at Apiay told us that it’s likely hauling coke. It’s been flying so low that it drops off the track, but it keeps reappearing, and when it does, it’s clear that it’s on a path here. Maybe not the Keys, but definitely somewhere in Florida.”

  Sumner leaned into the screen and watched the dot track along the path. “Did the Colombians hail it?”

  The man nodded. “They did, and the guy responded with a dare. Told them they’d never catch him, he was too good. They said he spoke in English with a strange accent. They couldn’t place it. When they addressed him in Spanish, he told them he spoke English only, and they should, too.”

  “That a problem for the Colombians?” Banner asked.

  The man chuckled. “Not at all. We’re all bilingual in the Air Tunnel Denial program. But an exclusively English-speaking cartel pilot is rare. I’ve never heard of it in the five years I’ve been dealing with these cartel flunkies. Have you?” The man directed his question at Sumner, who shook his head.

  “Never. Always Spanish-speaking pilots.” Sumner pointed at the dot. “That him?”

  The employee took a sip of coffee from a mug. “Yep. And he is good. They scrambled Jorge to intercept and he said that they played tag in the air for over fifty minutes before Jorge hit maximum range and had to turn back. He said that the guy flew like a stunt pilot. Jorge was impressed, and you know how hard it is to impress Jorge.”

  Sumner straightened. “Keep me posted on this guy. He enters our airspace, I want to hear about it.”

  “Will do,” the man said.

  Sumner waved Banner back out the door. “Let’s go to my office. We can talk there.”

  Sumner’s office was stark white with a black wooden desk in a modern style, a chrome architect’s desk lamp with a bright halogen light and a laptop in a docking station. On the wall behind his desk was a black-and-white photograph of a figure, its body a black smudge surrounded by a dense fog. The tips of trees appeared at various places where the fog thinned, and in one corner Banner could see a lake or pond behind the figure. The scene appeared quiet, eerie, and the image was arresting with its stark beauty. Sumner saw him staring at it.

  “That’s a picture I took of my grandfather two months ago as he walked along a lake in Minnesota. We would go there every year, alo
ng with my father and uncles to hunt and fish. One morning the fog was so dense that we couldn’t see far enough in front of us to even take out the boats. He went to check on some lines we’d strung by a dock, and I snapped the shot as he walked back toward our cottage.”

  “It’s an arresting photo,” Banner said. Sumner appeared pleased. He gazed at the picture a moment before looking back at Banner.

  “I checked out the odds of Caldridge being killed prior to being ransomed. It’s an uncommon occurrence. Apparently hostages are rarely killed, though they are tortured. Dead hostages aren’t worth much.”

  Banner grimaced. His mind refused to even consider that Caldridge was dead, but he hated the idea of her being tortured.

  “I have to think she’s alive, and I also think that she can hold her own in most scenarios. I don’t think she’d lose her cool.”

  Sumner sighed. “I agree. Her ultra training is going to come in handy in this instance. You need a strong mind to endure running more than one hundred miles without stopping, but you need an even stronger mind to overcome the despair that comes from torture.” He shook his head. “I just wish they’d contact us, already. Get the ransom ball rolling.”

  Banner couldn’t agree more. “I have six operatives in Mexico currently, but they’re in deep cover and hundreds of miles south of Ciudad. I’m considering moving them into position to attempt a rescue.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Sinaloa.”

  Sumner whistled. “That’s home to the worst of the worst. Weren’t they responsible for the beheadings?”

  Banner nodded. “They took the heads to Mexico City and tossed them on a dance floor.”

  Sumner tapped on his computer screen. He turned the laptop so that Banner could see the monitor. On it was a picture of a swarthy man with small eyes and thick lips. Sumner pointed to him.